Holly Robinson's Blog, page 3

Can You Manifest the Life You Want? 5 Steps to Try

the path to bothwell beach scaled

We took a friend to Portsmouth, NH for dinner recently. It was a busy Saturday night, so my husband suggested the parking garage. “You’ll never find a parking space on the street near the restaurant,” he said.

“Of course I will,” I said, and I did.

“Good parking karma,” our friend suggested.

Is there such a thing?

“You just have to visualize what you want, say your affirmations, and it will come to you,” says another friend who is a big believer in the power of positive thinking. She’s extremely successful in her writing career, but is that because she’s using the power of visualization to manifest what she wants—known in pop psychology circles as “the law of attraction?” Is she lucky? Or is she simply outworking everybody else?

Social media has been flooded with young women reciting affirmations like “everything works out for me” and declaring how “lucky” they are, a practice the media quickly dubbed “lucky girl syndrome.” Here, the fundamental belief is that, if you think of yourself as lucky (in love, finances, health, or whatever), then you will manifest your own good luck.

Do any of these manifestations and affirmations work? Or is this the adult equivalent of leaving cookies for Santa?

I say it’s worth hedging your bets.

My first real visualization of “the writing life” began when I was in my twenties and housesitting for a professor one summer. I spent a lot of time sitting on the deck and pretending to read every morning because I was spying on the neighbor across the street. This woman was a well-known writer and I admired her books. Every morning, she drove her children to camp after her husband went to work, and then brought her laptop out to the deck. She wrote for hours out there.

And I do mean hours. Sometimes this woman didn’t move until someone dropped her children off and her husband came home. After dinner I’d often see her outside again, sitting with her husband and drinking wine while the kids played in the yard.

I very badly wanted what she had: a creative life filled with love.

Fast-forward to the present. I am a writer, a mother, and a wife. My house doesn’t have a deck, but it has a patio and a porch; I have spent countless hours writing in both of these places while my kids were at school and my husband was at work.

Did I manifest this life by visualizing it?

Not a chance. I worked countless side jobs to put myself through college and an MFA program. Like most writers, I’ve had more rejections than acceptances, and in the early years I had to work in marketing to sustain myself as a writer.

On the other hand, if I’d never seen that professor’s life, if I’d never believed it was possible, I couldn’t have wished for it. I might not have spent years working to achieve that visualized goal of being on a lifelong creative journey.

And the parking karma? That’s the same sort of thing. I believe I will find a parking space because I’ve done this before and the odds are in my favor: somebody will be leaving as I arrive, and that space will be mine. I just have to be in the right place at the right time to seize that opportunity instead of giving up.

So maybe that’s what manifesting really is: knowing something is possible, wanting it, and using all of your passion, intellect, and problem-solving skills to achieve it.

Try these five steps for fun:

1. Think of something you want that seems out of reach.

2. Imagine yourself living the life of someone who has that thing you want, whether it’s a toned body or a successful career.

3. List all the ways your imaginary person could have achieved your fantasy goal without inheritance or nepotism. Did they likely go to college and study a certain subject? Go to a gym five days a week? Work two jobs so they could buy that fun car?

4. Finally, list practical steps you can take to achieve that same thing. Start with the tiniest, easiest one, like taking an online class or spending a weekend afternoon researching your options. For instance, I’m thinking of writing a biography. I’ve never written one before and have no idea how to go about it, but I signed up as a member of Biographers International Organization to find resources.

5. Keep taking more tiny steps every day toward your goal while continuing to imagine yourself as someone who has achieved it.

Will this work? Maybe not. But, whatever happens, you will be moving forward.

The post Can You Manifest the Life You Want? 5 Steps to Try appeared first on Holly Robinson.

What’s in a Car? Memories on Wheels

I was walking the dogs this morning when our young neighbor drove by in a Jeep. Her bumper sticker said it all: “Jeep Hair Don’t Care.”

In a flash, a memory hit: me singing to the radio in my first car, a beast of an 8-cylinder Buick sedan handed down by my grandfather. Riding in it was like sitting in a living room, with its long blue bench seats and the scenery floating by. That Buick was so old and rusty, I had to duct tape the wheel wells so it would pass state inspection; within minutes of inspection, the tape would come loose and start flapping like streamers.

The next notable car was the forest green VW Beetle I bought in graduate school. The only way to defrost the windshield was to aim a defroster tube straight at the glass. If there hadn’t been holes rusted through the floor, I probably would have asphyxiated from the exhaust fumes. Still, like all of my favorite cars, this one served as dressing room, camping van, living room, and dining room as I shuttled between classes, restaurant gigs, and a moldy basement studio apartment.

It wasn’t until I finished my master’s degree that I got my first “real car;” that is, a vehicle that would reliably start every morning. This was when my mother gave me a manual shift, 6-cylinder Pontiac Sunbird as a graduation present. She regretted the decision when I announced that I intended to drive to San Francisco.

“If I’d known you were going to pull a stunt like that,” Mom grumbled, “I would’ve given you a watch instead.”

I set off on my cross-country adventure nonetheless. I was 26 years old with a newly-minted MFA, an unpublished novel, and no job skills beyond being able to balance multiple hot plates on my arms. No credit cards or cell phone. Nothing but cash—and not much of that—a couple of suitcases, cassette tapes, my cat, and a wooden Japanese screen from a thrift shop. I navigated from the East Coast to the West using paper maps that were never properly folded because I couldn’t be bothered with the complex origami of it. The cat howled any time we were in motion and I sang to drown her out.

The adventures on that particular cross-country trip were enough to set any mother’s hair on fire. I received a speeding ticket for going over 100 mph from a cop who said, “If you were my daughter, I’d throw you in jail.”

In Denver, I was nearly car-jacked by a guy in a hotel parking lot who threw himself onto the hood and demanded a ride. I floored the accelerator instead and knocked him off.

Then, in the middle of Death Valley, my car overheated. When I pulled into a remote rest stop, the bathroom was filled with women and children. They had washed their clothes and hung them on the bathroom stalls, and had set up a hot plate for cooking.

Outside, I was immediately surrounded by men who told me they’d lost all their money in Las Vegas. They pleaded with me to pay them to fix my car. “Our kids are hungry and so are we.”

“I don’t have much to give,” I said, handing them ten dollars just as a truck driver pulled into the lot and jumped down from his cab.

“Leave her alone,” he barked and asked me what the problem was.

When I explained, he fiddled with the engine, added water to something, and followed me the rest of the way to San Francisco to make sure I reached my friend’s house in the city. I’ll forever regret not knowing how to get in touch with him to say thank you.

In San Francisco, I drove up and over the crest of a hill with such speed that the car flew into the air like something out of a movie and landed a bang on the other side. Once I’d found a job, I sold the Pontiac to a guy in his twenties with a goatee and pockets full of cash and bought my first new car ever: a sensible Honda.

That Honda ferried me to Mexico and Canada before I married and moved back to Massachusetts, where I rapidly moved into the dreaded Minivan stage once the children started coming. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I realized I could once again fall in love with a car.

This time it was a Mini Cooper Clubman in a deep plum color. It’s small enough to park anywhere in Boston, but big enough for my dogs when I road trip to Prince Edward Island. Good on gas, but still a joy to drive.

“So do we have a deal?” the salesman asked after I’d done a test drive with that car.

I shook my head. “Not unless you include racing stripes on the hood.”

He gave me a look that said Really? I suppose because I’m over sixty and meant to be sedate.

“Yup,” I said. “That’s the deal.”

Maybe now I need a bumper sticker: “Mini Hair Don’t Care.”

The post What’s in a Car? Memories on Wheels appeared first on Holly Robinson.

Spring Cleaning? Don’t Take My Advice

It’s fifty degrees and the forsythia is budding. That means one thing: I will try, and probably fail, to do a serious spring cleanout.

Here’s why I want to try: I’m embarrassed by the thought of my kids cleaning out our house after I’m gone. It’s too easy to imagine them saying things like, “Who still uses paper clips?” or “Why are there DVDs mixed in with the cookbooks?”

They’ll moan over the collections of hand-embroidered aprons and Spanish fans. They’ll puzzle over hundreds of photographs of relatives whose names nobody remembers, piled together in a wooden box gathering dust in the living room.

I’ve got a spring cleaning “to do” list that includes sensible steps like buying boxes, so I can pack up extra mugs, clothing, and silverware for Goodwill; calling local consignment shops to see if they want that extra furniture; and ordering a dumpster.

Yes. A dumpster. That’s because we don’t just have a house that needs purging, but a whole barn. A stately, 18th-century barn.

A barn that now contains, among other things: my father’s ancient camera equipment; several bikes; my mother’s wedding china; my husband’s science fiction books; a toboggan we’re all afraid to ride; Halloween costumes that don’t fit anyone; a fender from one son’s old car; several pairs of skis nobody uses; and countless piles of lumber and boxes of screws, nuts, drill bits, and plastic pieces that my husband is certain will come in handy one day. (Just recently he crowed about having found a screw that fit perfectly when he was fixing a broken desk chair.)

In other words, whenever we can’t find something, we say, “It must be in the barn!” Then we hang our heads in despair because that barn is our Bermuda Triangle.

Other people are better at spring cleaning than I am. They must have the sort of ruthlessness I lack. An ability to say, “Nope, I don’t care if I give away my son’s old guitars.”

My problem is that I cherish our family memories, and many of these objects represent different eras in our family. Pictured here, for instance, is a table, some pottery, and two paintings. The table is an old gardening table I found in the shed of our first house—the house where my husband and I were married. I sanded, painted, and varnished it so I could use it as a writing desk for many years.

The pottery? That was on my mother-in-law’s shelves in her living room until she died. I miss her every day and it makes me feel better to see it.

And that painting of the horse? Primitive, I know. But it was done by my great-grandmother when she was sixteen years old—before she sailed from England to America.

Every object we possess tells a story. (Okay, maybe not the boxes of screws or stacks of lumber.) Those art projects my children created remind me of how it was to have a house full of their ideas and energy. The things cluttering my desk—a paperweight from my first husband, a mug from my son’s high school, and a handmade box from a good friend—are reminders of my path to get to where I am now.

The reason why so many of us have trouble following the reasonable Marie Kondo philosophy of discarding and tidying all at once is that our objects contain multitudes: ourselves as children, parents, friends, and partners. With so much information coming at us every minute via phones and computers, our memories of past selves get pushed into dusty mental corners and become trickier to access. Our objects act as magic portals to the past.

Ideally, our house and barn will be tidy one day. I’ll keep whittling away at the clutter. But I suspect many of these objects will be with me to the end, including that box of old photos. Even nameless, they are still family.

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How to Survive Marital Whiplash

“So I’m off to the gym,” my husband says, yanking on a T-shirt. “I’ll start dinner when I get back.”

“Thanks,” I say, but I can’t help staring at the guy like he’s some random FedEx driver who’s wandered into my office.

In the nearly 30 years Dan and I have been married, this is the first time I’ve heard those particular words tumble out of his mouth. Not the part about cooking dinner—it’s a given in our family that Dan’s the family cook. Whether you want homemade Ramen or paella, he’s your guy. A tuna melt? Call me.

No, it’s the idea of him going to the gym. In all my days with this man—and there have been many—he has never once voluntarily signed up for his own gym membership, much less actually gone. Now he’s doing CrossFit, no less.

I’m suffering from Marital Whiplash this Valentine’s Day. If you’ve been partnered for any length of time, you probably know what that is: a situation where the person you are most intimate with suddenly adopts a whole new identity. It might be a small change, like suddenly wearing hip Blundtstone boots instead of sneakers, or playing electronic music instead of Taylor Swift.

I suffered my most serious case of Marital Whiplash last year when Dan took a job in California while I held down the fort in Massachusetts. For seven months we did the bicoastal marriage thing and learned a lot. He started talking to random strangers in bars because he ate a lot of dinners out. I learned how to fix the thermostat and did the snow shoveling.

Whenever Dan came home, we’d have little bicker sessions about things like, “Why are the spatulas on the right side of the stove?” And, whenever I visited him, I’d wonder how he kept his glassware so neatly spaced.

Then the tech job ended and Dan came home. Instead of commanding every horizontal space in the house for my editing, gift-wrapping, and newspaper-reading sessions, I had to pick up after myself, and there were no more slumber parties with my girlfriends. Dan had to learn how to share the covers in bed again. (Translation: Give them all to me.) I was working and he was job hunting, and then the war broke out in Israel and one of our daughters, who lives in Tel Aviv with her baby and husband, came to stay with us for three months. I went from having a house to myself to suddenly having three generations sharing a kitchen. It was a tremendous blessing, but my neck is still sore from that particular whiplash.

Then our daughter and her family returned to Israel, and Dan announced he was going to give up job hunting and retire instead.

“Retire?” I asked. “As in, you won’t go to work anymore?” My husband isn’t yet that magical Medicare age; we’d have to pony up the money to buy health insurance.

“That’s usually what the word means, yes,” Dan says.

“So what will you do instead of working?”

He gave this a little thought, then said, “I want to do house projects and make nice food for people.”

“You won’t miss having a job?” My voice was a squeak as panic set in. Not about money, or at least not yet, but about having to weather another case of Marital Whiplash.

“Not a bit.”

And he hasn’t. Dan launched right into a project he has put on hold for several years—building a new outdoor grill cabinet—and, true to his word, dinner’s on the table every night.

“Every day is a gift,” he says, then adds, “Ow, my lats. That last workout was brutal. I’d better do some yoga.”

Lats? Yoga? Who is this guy?

I’m surviving this particular Marital Whiplash by keeping my office door closed during the day. I’ve also had to wrap my mind around the idea that Dan is now free to tag along on my business trips. Oh, and sometimes I have to take a little time to find things in the closets because he’s suddenly reorganized and moved everything around.

On the other hand, we’re once again learning a new marital choreography. This is much better than being in a stagnant relationship where your routines are so cemented in place that you can’t imagine doing anything else. And, hey, Ramen’s on the menu again!

Dan’s right. Every day is a gift. Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone.

The post How to Survive Marital Whiplash appeared first on Holly Robinson.

What’s So Bad about Being a Ghostwriter?

I just finished reading Jillian Cantor’s new novel, The Fiction Writer. It’s one of those entertaining novels that plays fast-and-loose with a classic tale by putting a contemporary spin on it. In this case, the book is based on Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. The plot revolves around a struggling novelist hired by “a reclusive megabillionaire twice named People’s Sexiest Man Alive, who wants her to write a book about his late grandmother’s surprising connection to Daphne du Maurier,” according to the book jacket.

Our protagonist, Olivia, has fallen on some hard knocks as a novelist. Cantor’s witty observations on what it’s like to try to make it in today’s publishing climate are spot on, like when she says Olivia’s second novel has received the “death knell” of a bad Kirkus review, or when Olivia is talking about writing and says, “If we do this for the rest of our lives, we might lose our minds.”

True enough. Cantor made me remember my first fiction writing class, decades ago, where the instructor (a novelist who was a literary success, but probably only sold a handful of copies) said, “If you think you want to be a writer, lie down with a cold cloth on your head and hope the feeling goes away.”

Writing fiction is more about persistence in the face of rejection than anything else, most days. I couldn’t agree more with Olivia (or Cantor) on that. But the one thing that bugged me about this novel was how Olivia felt “less than” as a ghostwriter despite being paid “fifty thousand up front” plus twenty percent of a publisher’s advance, sub-rights, and royalties. Nice work if you can get it, I say.

Yet, despite this solid wage, Olivia imagines her younger, more idealistic self saying, “Why would you want to be a ghostwriter, when you could be a real writer?” Even her too-good-to-be-true friend Noah, a fellow MFA program survivor, says, “Is this what you really want to be writing? The Olivia I used to know wrote because she loved it.”

Hold your snorting horses. What is so wrong with being a ghostwriter? How is that a lesser art form than being a novelist, especially when most literary novels sell fewer than 3000 copies? (And that’s being optimistic. Sure, commercial writers like Lisa Jewell, Dan Brown, and Stephen King sell in the millions, but how many of those writers are there?)

It’s tough to make a living as a fiction writer. Most of the novelists I know have other careers. Most teach. But others of us—the lucky ones, I think—get to make our living as writers by collaborating with other people who have stories to tell.

Contrary to Olivia’s point of view in The Fiction Writer, whether we writers-for-hire are being paid to write someone else’s memoir, inspirational self-help book, or popular science narrative, it takes a lot of passion, skill, and hard work to do it well. Ghostwriters need to gather information through interviews, which means asking the right questions. You also might be called upon to do research and fact-checking. Often, it’s the ghostwriter who collaborates with the author on the structure of the book as well as the right “voice,” and together you make a lot of editorial decisions about what goes and what stays in the content.

It’s up to the hired writer to help the author stick to a deadline if there is already a publishing deal in place. We also cheer on our authors through the hardscrabble work of collaborating on original content and shaping it for the intended audience. Then, once the book is in production, it is often the ghostwriter who ends up working with the editor on revisions.

I’ve been a ghostwriter now for nearly twenty years, and I have never stopped thinking of it as an honor to have people trust me with their stories. I will always love writing fiction—it’s an escape portal like no other–but collaborating on books with other people grants me new perspectives and stretches my craft in ways I couldn’t otherwise.

So, Olivia, maybe Noah was right when he urged you to quit. Not because your client was a rich creep, but because your clients deserve your passion and hard work in writing their stories–especially if they’re paying you fifty thousand up front.

The post What’s So Bad about Being a Ghostwriter? first appeared on Holly Robinson.

The post What’s So Bad about Being a Ghostwriter? appeared first on Holly Robinson.

How to Survive Christmas

It’s that time of year again, when the bright lights, jolly music, and Christmas inflatables are prompting panicked shoppers to get online or run through the mall.

Instead, I’m holed up in a rental cottage, hammering away at revisions on a novel.

And you know what? I’m happy, which feels weird because for years I’ve struggled to stay on an even keel at Christmas. Maybe I’ve finally cracked the code for staying sane.

It isn’t the extra holiday house chores that have bogged me down in the past—I generally love having company. It’s not the commercialism, either, or even hearing Mariah Carey shriek “All I Want for Christmas is You,” a song that reminds me of that Star Trek Wrath of Kahn movie where they drop eel larva into Chekov’s ear.

No, the source of my holiday blues seems to be some melancholy hangover from past holidays. Whenever Christmas rolls around, I feel like I’m standing under a bowling ball disguised as mistletoe.

There’s no rational reason for this. I’m not living in a country at war, battling cancer, or struggling to pay bills. I’ve had many happy family Christmases with our five kids. Cookies baked for Santa, stockings hung by the chimney with care, crackling fires, the works.

So why the tendency to feel sad? Why the need for survival strategies?

The foundation for my holiday melancholy was laid during childhood, I suspect, because some of my most vivid memories are of my mom locking herself in the bedroom to cry. Then there were the Christmases after my parents divorced, which involved lots of score-keeping between the generals on each side of the battlefield over how much time we kids spent with them.

I had a divorce of my own, too. Even though my ex and I have always been amicable and fluid about custody arrangements, there were times during Christmas when my kids were with him and not with me, and yes, I cried. A lot.

Now our children are adults. My ex and I are still friends and we still share them over the holidays. It’s easier than it used to be, emotionally, though part of me still wants everyone gathered under one roof.

I still decorate the tree, hang the stockings, and throw lights on the bushes outside. The house looks warm and festive. There will be good food (thanks to my second husband) and cocktails and presents. There will be love and laughter in this house, and I will enjoy every minute.

Every minute I’m not sad, that is, for the people who are gone, either passed from this life or who simply won’t make it home. I will occasionally be sorrowful that this Christmas isn’t quite perfect, even though I know full well that nothing ever is.

We all need to be reminded that those perfect holiday movies, or even the scenes through our neighbor’s windows, are only illusions. Whatever holidays we choose to celebrate, everyone is mourning someone, wishing our kids would behave better, worrying about heating bills, feeling anxious about health scares, wondering how we ended up divorced, fighting over politics, or being just plain tired.

It’s an imperfect world even at Christmas. Maybe even especially at Christmas. So how to survive?

1. Find Your Own Pockets of Happiness

I can be more emotionally whole during the holidays if I arrange some time for myself or with special friends. I suggest you do the same. Note: Nobody else will give this time to you, so you need to make it happen for yourself.

2. Give What You Can

Whether it’s the Salvation Army bell ringers, your local church or library, public radio, or global charities, give what you can to support causes that matter to you. You’ll feel less like the Grinch, guaranteed.

3. Take Advantage of Smaller Moments

We have a big family, so it’s almost impossible to have an uninterrupted conversation. What makes the holiday special for me are the smaller, quieter moments. This year, for instance, I took one daughter Christmas shopping and out for drinks. I’ve invited two of the kids to see holiday decorations in an historic mansion, and I’ll hike most days with the dogs and some smaller group of kids, or maybe even just one of them. My husband and I will sneak away, too, for our morning walks before breakfast. Taking advantage of those quieter moments gives everyone breathing room and makes this a special time.

4. Expect Less Out of this One Day

Christmas doesn’t have to solve all of the world’s problems, or even those within our own families. It’s okay for this to be a day where we simply gather together. In the end, the holiday is special, but there are 364 other days that can be special, too.

The post How to Survive Christmas appeared first on Holly Robinson.

Is Making Bad Art Worth the Effort?

A friend recently sent me an old photo she took of me writing. It’s a startling picture, and not just because of my 1990s Big Hair or the typewriter with reams of computer paper spitting out of it.

No, what’s shocking to me is how oblivious I am in this picture to everything beyond the words on the page. I didn’t know my friend was taking that photograph. I clearly wasn’t listening to the noisy play of our four young children. I definitely wasn’t worrying about my credit card balance or, during this particular July of 1995, the Iraq disarmament crisis and a killer heat wave in Chicago.

To write, to paint, to hear a song in your head: every creative act requires inspiration. More importantly, though, creativity requires the willpower to block out the world’s noise. That means reserving time and space for it, even if it’s just an hour of writing alone in your car, an afternoon spent painting, or a late night at your piano.

Creativity also requires believing in your art enough to grant yourself permission to make that time and space available. Too few people actually do that. We often foolishly believe that our lives will get easier tomorrow or next week or next year. We promise ourselves we’ll write a memoir once the kids start school, or that we’ll take drawing lessons after we retire. We want to pay off the car loans and the mortgage before we indulge in hours of creativity.

That’s the heart of the problem, isn’t it? We view creativity as an indulgence.

And why wouldn’t we? Why should we write a play, if nobody will perform it? Why write a book, if nobody is going to want to publish it? Why draw bad pictures or mess around with muddy watercolors? What’s the point of making lopsided pottery bowls?

A key question: Is bad art worth the effort?

Making art is expensive. Even if you’re not paying for lessons or materials, you’re using hours of time that could be devoted to something “productive,” like cleaning the house, taking a class in coding, or working out at the gym.

It’s hard to believe in your right to make art. But what would happen if none of us believed in ourselves, or in the process of creativity, enough to do it? What if none of us dared to block out the constant noise of the news, the wars and shootings and climate disasters, or the domestic tasks at home that are always calling our names? What then?

Most likely we’d end up living in a world where books are written by AI and everything we use or admire is manufactured by machines. A world where nobody pays attention to the colors of the leaves, the motion of a woman’s dress, or the dialogue overheard between strangers on a street. A world where nobody hears a melody in their minds and starts strumming a guitar.

It would be a more efficient world. But, as Pablo Picasso said, “Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” A world where nobody found the time and space to create art would be one where we never retreat far enough into ourselves to discover what’s truly in our hearts and share it. A world where we never stayed silent long enough to understand other points of view or marvel at the beauty of raindrops on the pavement. A world where the noise and pressure of external events would win over the essence of human experience.

So do it. I dare you to find a few hours this week to create something. As Elizabeth Gilbert wrote in Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, “The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, then stands back to see if we can find them.”

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Can We Ever Be Completely Happy?

I was driving through Boston recently when I stopped at a light. Next to me was a rust bucket of a car. The driver had long hair, a sleeve tattoo, and a sharp profile that said, “Don’t mess with me.”

Clearly a guy with a hard life and an even harder past.

Yet, in the backseat, I spotted two smiley-faced birthday balloons. One pink, one yellow. A little girl, maybe three or four, was strapped into a car seat and singing, her chubby legs kicking in rhythm.

Sorrow in the front seat. Joy in the back. Maybe that’s everyone’s story.

The next day, I went out to water my garden and marveled at a bright yellow goldfinch alighting in the tall white cosmos. My tomato plants were heavy with ruby-red fruit and the sunflowers were starting to open. Just seeing them made me smile.

When I finished watering, I went inside for breakfast and sat down to read the paper. There was one story about the fire sweeping through Maui and another about a 3-year-old child who died on the bus of migrants Gov. Abbott sent from Texas to Chicago under his Operation Lone Star initiative. I could smell the ashes and my face was wet with tears, imagining how it must have been, fleeing from your burning city. Or sitting with your dying child on a bus that’s taking you somewhere through a foreign land.

Our daughter in Israel called as I was washing the breakfast dishes. As we chatted, I made faces at her baby, a curly-haired redhead who loves to crawl after their cat. I laughed at her antics, but when we hung up, I thought (for the millionth time) about the ongoing conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians and felt a gut-wrenching sorrow. I wondered, too, if our daughter had seen the story in the paper about men blocking women from getting on buses because they thought women should ride in the back—or stay home.

Maybe it’s a mistake to read the paper.

Or maybe it’s impossible to ever be completely happy.

My joy is always colored by sorrow. But the opposite is true, too.

During the pandemic, I grieved for loved ones lost and felt sorrow for my children having to upend their newly independent lives and come home from school and jobs to shelter with us. But I was joyful, too, because my adult children were gathered under my roof for months of board games and TV and communal dinners. It was a life that felt suspended out of time. A gift.

More recently, running on the beach with my dogs, I felt such a lightness of spirit that I laughed as I ran, but the next moment I had these dire thoughts: One day, these particular dogs won’t be with me. And one day I will no longer be able to run.

I had to remind myself that on this day I could run with my dogs, and that was all that mattered.

In his poem, “On Joy and Sorrow,” Kahil Gibran writes, “Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.”

It is this, I think, that makes us uniquely human, this ability to laugh one minute and cry the next, to embrace joy even while we feel it slip away between our fingers. Recognizing the possibility of holding joy and sorrow together allows us to feel compassion not only for ourselves, but for everyone around us, and that is life’s greatest gift of all.

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Why Stay Married When You’re Living Apart?

I’m unloading the dishwasher when my husband comes up behind me. “You’re making chaos out of my stemless glassware,” he says.

“What are you talking about?”

He rearranges the glasses I’ve just put on the shelf. There are only six of them, so it doesn’t take long. When he’s finished, there are two of each kind nestled together like animals on Noah’s Ark.

When we both reach into the dishwasher for the clean plates, I step back. “I’ll leave you to it,” I say, and go out on the balcony to not scream in frustration, reminding myself that this is Dan’s condo. He has a right to be anal about the glasses. I don’t live here.

Well, technically, it is our condo, and I do live here. Once in a while.

Otherwise, I’m at our home in Massachusetts, where we experience different versions of this same power struggle whenever Dan comes back. Last time, he grumbled, “Why did you move the spatulas?” and put them back to the left of the stove, where they’d been living before he took a job in California six months ago and I moved them to the right side.

“Because I’m right-handed and so are you. It’s more convenient this way, so you don’t have to reach across a hot stove to get one.” I moved the spatulas back.

“It clutters the counter if you put them on the right,” he said. “That’s my food prep area!” He moved them back to the left.

What are we, five years old?

No. We are sensible people in our third decade of marriage. We are also parents to five adult children who are all, bless them, living independently. That’s why, when Dan was excited about this job offer on the west coast, I blithely said, “Go ahead and take it. We’ll figure it out.”

The logistics were the easy part. He moved to a condo two miles from his job in Huntington Beach, CA, and I stayed in our house. “Why doesn’t your wife come with you, if the children are grown?” Dan’s colleagues ask now and then, mystified.

On the surface, the answer is easy: My whole life is in Massachusetts. Most of our children live on the east coast, plus we have two dogs and a garden. My friends are here, and so are nearly all of my ghostwriting clients.

“Doesn’t she at least love the California weather?” Dan’s colleagues want to know.

Dan certainly does. He has always been a fan of sunshine and palm trees.

Me, I love a good snowstorm. Or a thunderstorm. Or autumn leaves. I even love hot, sticky summer weather. Mostly what I love is all of the green spaces around me. In Huntington Beach, I drive down the street and see this: shopping plaza, shopping plaza, condo complex! Shopping plaza, condo complex, highway! The poppies and cactus flowers are certainly beautiful in spring, and now that it’s summer, the roses and jacaranda trees are doing their thing. There’s a long, long beach, which is why surfers like it. But there are oil pumps even in the wetlands and the whole place smacks of commercial excess. Orange County highlights everything humans have done wrong in the last half-century.

But I digress. The real point of this piece is to describe what it’s like to live apart after nearly 30 years of marriage. Let me start by saying Dan is my heart, my everything. The only reason I’m married at all is because I’m with this particular man.

Now, however, as we navigate living apart, I find myself remembering what it was like to be young. At 30, I still maintained that I would never marry or have children, because I wanted to be free. I was headstrong and ambitious and curious. I wanted to keep an overnight bag packed in case the urge hit for me to travel to Java or Spain or Nova Scotia.

I’m experiencing that kind of freedom again. The kids are out of the house. My mother, who I took care of in her last years, died recently. After Dan left, the house felt too big, but gradually I’ve expanded my reach. One of the upstairs bedrooms is now my office. I sleep in another. Bill paying and gift wrapping are relegated to the dining room. At night, I lounge in front of the TV with the dogs, each of us occupying a separate recliner.

Some days I talk to nobody but neighbors. Other days are filled with phone calls or friends who come over for dinner or even spend the night. I miss Dan when I’m not busy, but I’m busy most of the time.

So now I find myself asking if this is still a marriage. We talk every night, sharing our days across the miles. When we visit, though, there is always this new power shuffle: Oh, right, you like to sleep on that side of the bed. And do you really have to clutter up the entire bathroom counter?

Dan, like me, is feeling the push-pull of this divided married life. He loves living in a condo he can clean in an hour instead of an old New England house where there’s always another thing that needs fixing. He can binge on Sci-Fi shows to his heart’s content and hit golf balls every day after work. Sometimes I’m afraid I’ll lose him to that life of bachelor ease, to that California promise of constant sunshine and a store on every corner.

Meanwhile, we’re exploring who we are without each other. “It’s good preparation for widowhood,” I told him the other day, because that’s on my mind these days, too: either of us could drop dead tomorrow, so it’s good for me to know how to change the batteries in the remote, fix the thermostat, and clean the filter on the septic tank.

What’s the point, really, of a long-term marriage? Obviously, if you want to have children, marriage can provide stability. It’s easier to raise kids with two parents, especially if both of them are bringing in money. For the partners, too, there is presumed stability. You know who you’re sleeping with at night, for better or worse. You have somebody to take care of you if you’re sick. You’re never lonely. But what about later, after the kids are gone?

Dan and I talk excitedly about our upcoming hiking trip in Spain and visiting our daughter in Israel. We also rely on one another. If I had cancer or a heart attack or fell down the stairs, I have no doubt that he’d care for me, just as I’d care for him. We are an uncoupled couple, figuring things out one day, even one hour, at a time. And maybe that’s what marriage is, in its simplest form: a commitment to keep saying yes to each other even while living apart.

The post Why Stay Married When You’re Living Apart? appeared first on Holly Robinson.

MammoWipes and Other Medical Indignities

I recently entered the dressing room of the clinic where I was having my annual “breast health” visit (a phrase that makes me think my boobs should be eating Paleo and doing cardio). Guess what was waiting on the bench inside?

A pink johnny, of course. But that’s not all. On top of the johnny was a white foil package the size of a condom wrapper, only instead of anything fun, it contained a sanitary wipe. The package label read “MammoWipe,” with a helpful blue bar over the “o” so that I’d know to say “MammOHWipe.” (Oh! Oh! Oh!)

My first thought: Was I supposed to wipe down the entire mammogram machine with this shitty little square? That didn’t seem very sanitary.

My second thought, once I realized the wipe was actually meant to rid the top half of my body of pesky deodorants and powders, was, “Wow, the marketing genius who came up with this brand name is definitely overpaid.”

Except, wait, it’s 2023. Probably ChatGPT did the honors.

Anyway, I tore open the package with my teeth (these are as impossible to open as those restaurant butter packets) and swabbed down before sticking my arms into the pink johnny and walking into the imaging room. The technician tried to be funny with phrases like, “Where’s my next victim? Let’s get this party started!” A+ for effort, but not helpful.

If you’ve never had a mammogram, picture a giant pannini maker in a freezing cold room. Only instead of putting bread and cheese inside flat plates to squeeze into a delicious sandwich, your boob’s going in there. The technician eases you into the machine by tugging at your breast like a stubborn horse before smashing it flat between two metal plates.

And I do mean smashing. It’s nearly impossible to get your breast out again without using a spatula to break the suction.

As I stood there being squeezed and imaged, the technician kept warning “Don’t move!” as if I could budge without turning my breast into string cheese.

If men needed their balls examined, you can bet they’d figure out a less painful machine. Or if men had annual pap smears, the tool in use would be a lot more evolved than that wooden Popsicle stick thingie, which I always imagine will leave splinters up my Lady Bits. (My husband argues that doctors check his prostate by sticking a finger up his wazoo, so maybe that’s more primitive, but it wouldn’t leave splinters and the finger isn’t cold.)

You’d think giving birth would be an exception to the medical system’s dehumanization campaign, since it’s a miracle of life and all that jazz, but not necessarily. I had a woman obstetrician overseeing my last pregnancy. When my labor wasn’t progressing after 24 hours, she crossed her arms and said, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have this baby before lunch?”

“Well, yes,” I said, because my mother raised me to be agreeable.

Now, did this doctor give me ANY information about what speeding up a birth might entail? Did she even MENTION that Pitocin—the drug they gave me—would turn my labor into a high-speed car chase, the sort that includes a wrecking ball and a gas tanker bursting into flames, like those Fast and Furious movies? Nope.

More recently, I had imaging done on my leg to see if the pain was from a blood clot. Into a dark room I went, wearing only underpants and a johnny (blue, this time, because hey, guys come here, too), and lay down on a table. A very cold table. The technician silently ran his alien probe up and down my leg, occasionally squeezing my calf or thigh so hard I yelped in pain.

If I’d been alone with this twerp in a dark room at age twenty, I might have been terrified. Instead I was furious. I finally sat up and said, “Don’t they train you to talk patients through procedures? Also, shouldn’t you have a female assistant if you’re going to shut yourself up in a dark room with a female patient?”

As I got dressed again after the mammogram, I thought fondly of my veterinarian, and how much time she devotes to comforting my nervous Pekinese during a checkup. She pats him, tells him how brave he is, and gives him a treat. What’s up with human healthcare, that people are treated like livestock, while our pets receive the red carpet and actual conversation?

In my next life, I’m definitely coming back as a Pekingese.

The post MammoWipes and Other Medical Indignities appeared first on Holly Robinson.